am so glad to be with you again. It seemed as if--it might
turn out badly."

"Beloved one," Loristan said the words in their own Samavian, "until
you are fed and at rest, you shall not talk at all."

Afterward, when he was himself again and was allowed to tell his
strange story, Marco found that both his father and Lazarus had at once
had suspicions when he had not returned. They knew no ordinary event
could have kept him. They were sure that he must have been detained
against his will, and they were also sure that, if he had been so
detained, it could only have been for reasons they could guess at.

"This was the card that she gave me," Marco said, and he handed it to
Loristan. "She said you would remember the name." Loristan looked at
the lettering with an ironic half-smile.

"I never heard it before," he replied. "She would not send me a name I
knew. Probably I have never seen either of them. But I know the work
they do. They are spies of the Maranovitch, and suspect that I know
something of the Lost Prince. They believed they could terrify you
into saying things which would be a clue. Men and women of their class
will use desperate means to gain their end."

"Might they--have left me as they threatened?" Marco asked him.

"They would scarcely have dared, I think. Too great a hue and cry
would have been raised by the discovery of such a crime. Too many
detectives would have been set at work to track them."

But the look in his father's eyes as he spoke, and the pressure of the
hand he stretched out to touch him, made Marco's heart thrill. He had
won a new love and trust from his father. When they sat together and
talked that night, they were closer to each other's souls than they had
ever been before.

They sat in the firelight, Marco upon the worn hearth-rug, and they
talked about Samavia--about the war and its heart-rending struggles,
and about how they might end.

"Do you think that some time we might be exiles no longer?" the boy
said wistfully. "Do you think we might go there together--and see
it--you and I, Father?"

There was a silence for a while. Loristan looked into the sinking bed
of red coal.

"For years--for years I have made for my soul that image," he said
slowly. "When I think of my friend on the side of the Himalayan
Mountains, I say, 'The Thought which Thought the World may give us that
also!'"

XVIII

"CITIES AND FACES"

The hours of Marco's unexplained absen